


The Only Heaven That Will Take Me

by Schwoozie



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Aftercare, Blow Jobs, Doggy Style, Exhibitionism, Multi, Porn with Feelings, Season/Series 02, Seduction, Threesome - F/M/M, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 07:10:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3165959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schwoozie/pseuds/Schwoozie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are all looking for escapes.</p><p>Beth, Daryl, Rick, the barn, and a hot, humid night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Heaven That Will Take Me

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for discussion of depression and attempted suicide.
> 
> Also, please note: This fic contains EXPLICIT, UNDERAGE SEX. I in no way condone two middle aged men having sex with a 16 year old girl. Ever. No way. Good bye.
> 
> That being said, it's hella fun to write.
> 
> Thanks to Mary as always for being wonderful.

Beth Greene is restless.

She lies on her back, watching the shadows of the night drift across her ceiling. The sheets are slightly damp around her from her sweat, the room hot and oppressive even with the window gaping open. Maggie snores quietly beside her, long, deep breaths that stir the hair behind Beth's ear on every exhale.

It's been a long time since they lay down—in a world without clocks, Beth can only estimate it at a few hours—and Beth has yet to close her eyes. It isn't because of Maggie's presence—they've grown up sleeping in and out of each other's beds, falling asleep after late night chats or huddled together to defend each other from nightmares. It isn't for any lack of tiredness, either; she hasn't slept, not deeply, in days, not since she drew a shattered mirror across the skin of her wrist.

It's one nightmare Maggie can't shield her from.

No one has gotten around to fixing the frame of the bathroom door; Beth doubts they ever will. When they abandon the house (and she knows they will—has listened through windows and doorways as Mr. Grimes discusses with his wife, with his once-friend; sees the way Daryl keeps his weapons close), the shattered splinters of the doorframe will remain. Maybe one day, those jagged slivers will be a weapon to save someone's life; or maybe they will rot into the ground of what was once a home, choked by dust and mold until a passer-by could not even recognize the remains of a door, let alone the girl who nearly took her life there.

Lost. Lost her life. Took implies some degree of intentionality, of purpose. She had been contemplating it, yes; had begged Maggie to go along with her, follow her hand in hand to the other side. If Lori had not found the knife she hid beneath the pillow, she would have done it then without hesitation. But when it came to the moment—meeting her own eyes in the mirror, missing the spark she'd once seen looking back—she felt like one of those dead things—shambling, mindless, limbs askew and flesh in pieces, living only for the spill of red and crunch of bones, the taking of that spark of life.

But when Beth dragged that mirror across her wrist—deaf to the shouting from outside, Maggie's desperate pounding—she had looked up for a moment, just a moment, and seen herself: pale, thin, skin beneath her eyes dark with hopelessness and sleepless nights; and there, alongside, for a moment, her mother. Sweet and shimmering as she had been in life, but her eyes were the eyes of the dead, and as she leaned towards Beth with mouth agape Beth saw herself with those eyes—and intentionality returned: she dropped the mirror, she clutched her leaking wrist and opened her mouth and breathed the breath that fueled her heart and warmed her skin and set a pounding to the flesh between her legs, like every inch of her was crying out as that precious liquid was lost. And she turned, and she broke—but it was ok. She was ok. She broke, but she knew too that to break was only to live another moment.

Beth rubs slowly at the bandage on her arm, feeling the twinge of pain as she presses against the jagged cut. It will scar, she knows it will, no matter her daddy's guarantee that it will heal good as new. Beth knows. She knows better now. Wounds don't close with a word and a prayer anymore. They never did, really, but somehow imagining a time when things were simple makes living the complicated a little easier—like there's something to fight for, to return to. A feeling, a moment of clarity, when the world and the dead are swept away and all that's left is pure and true. Like the note at the height of a harmony, the echo as a singing bowl trembles into the air—she knows, somewhere, somehow, there's something left.

Maggie snores, and Beth is restless, and dawn is far enough away that she can slip from the bed and into the hall, dart out into the night without being seen. She knows where the strangers hold their watch and she easily avoids them, tracking with silent feet the well-known path taken on so many mornings before the sun would rise—to milk the cows, or collect the eggs, or soothe a goat in its anxious bleating. Sidestepping the blood gone cool on the ground she reaches the barn and slips inside, quiet and small as a ghost.

It's only then that she pauses, takes a breath; realizes how dark it is in here, even with the moon glowing pale through the upper window. There is not a sound, save her own over-quick breaths. She bites her lip, and steps forward.

The hand seals across her mouth before she can scream and drags her back against a rock-hard chest, pinning her with another across her stomach. Beth acts on instincts she didn't know she had—pairs a bite to the palm with a sharp stomp to the instep, and the man fumbles her with a curse; she shoves herself away, scrambling in the straw for a weapon.

“Girl, get the fuck back here!” a voice hisses. She pauses, recognizing it. As she hesitates, a light suddenly flares to life, illuminating Daryl Dixon's face where he stands by the door, looking pissed as hell. “What the fuck you doing here?”

“What the... fuck are you doing, grabbing me like that?” she hisses back, hauling herself to her feet and her hands to her hips. “I thought you were gonna kill me!”

“I _should_ kill your dumb ass,” Daryl mutters. The lantern he holds throws his features into relief, sharp cheekbones casting long shadows and making his odd face, his squinting eyes, seem even more alien. An odd face for an odd man, but, she knows, not a bad one, not with how hard he looked for... and Beth looks into the shadows beyond, wondering, suddenly, if anything in that little girl had been aware of her time in this barn. If she had stumbled about amongst Beth's friends and neighbors, her mama, her brother, and thought of things she might say, questions she would ask. Did she expect those adults to protect her, to provide as they once would have done? What in her little brain was aware of the bullet as it plunged between her eyes?

Beth realizes Daryl must have said something else when he steps suddenly forward, walking until she stands in his circle of light.

“What?” she asks, squinting against the contrast of light and dark.

“I _said,_ ya do remember this barn was full of walkers a few days ago?”

Beth glares at him, crossing her arms on her chest. “What, you think I'd _forget_? What does it matter, anyway; y'all killed all of them. There isn't anything left to hurt me.” Beth tilts her head. “That why you're here, then? To make sure you didn't miss any?”

Daryl shifts on his feet, looking away from her. “Just wanted some quiet,” he mutters.

“Seems pretty quiet where you are, all the way out there.”

“You don't know nothin' girl,” Daryl mutters. He strides past her to hang his lantern on the wall, then leans beside it, crossing his arms across his chest. Something about his stance—the ripple of his muscles in the lamplight, the bend of his leg that emphasizes his crotch, the aggressive tilt of his head—it gets Beth's blood racing in a way she didn't expect; a way that makes her feel awful small, across from his powerful body. She has to swallow and look away before speaking.

“I couldn't sleep,” she says, plucking at her pajama pants. “I used to come here all the time when I couldn't sleep. Talk to the cows.”

Daryl snorts. “You talked to cows?”

“Bet you talk to your crossbow,” Beth shoots back, narrowing her eyes. “You baby it way more than I ever babied Marie. Bet you babble at it while you shine it up, blow raspberries.”

Daryl's face drops open in a look of shock. He blinks at her once, twice, and Beth worries that she's gone too far—that this strange antagonism she feels is leading a good man to a place where he really would hurt her. She tenses her muscles, preparing for flight—when Daryl blows out a half-laugh, half-grunt, leaning his head back on the wall and regarding her more carefully than he had been doing.

“Well. Ya got balls I didn't know about, kid.”

“I'm not a kid,” Beth spits, crossing her arms to mirror him. “And heck yes, I do.”

Daryl shakes his head. “Gotta have 'em, to be wandering 'round the dark like you are.” He pushes off from the wall, jerking his head. “C'mon, I'll take you back. Tuck you in your beddie-bye.”

“I don't want to go back yet,” Beth says—as primly as she can with the visual flooding her mind—lying in her childhood bed, Maggie nowhere to be found; Daryl's torso suddenly looming out of the dark, his long hard arms framing her face; his breath hot and feral on her neck as she tugs at his shirt, reaches for his pants...

Beth's glad for the long shadows, the way they hide her blush. She's never thought things like this before; at least, not so intensely, and not about a man in front of her. Not even about Jimmy, not even when they tangled together in this very barn a few weeks before her mother passed, before the new world began—even when he touched her with nervous tapping fingers, she felt nothing like the dizzy daze the shadows of Daryl's throat are causing within her. It unsettles her, makes her heart rush all the faster. She wonders what it is, about this moment, that pools such heat between her legs. It could be the damp of the night, the way the sweat drips into the dip of her back; her dark thoughts, begun with Maggie at her side and more intense now, alone in the night with him.

She looks to the side and sees where her mother—the corpse of her mother—might have stood, clawing at the boards, sniffing the air and groaning the groans of the starving. The creature that was once a woman who baked the best peach pies in the county, who would have sung Beth to sleep on a night like this had she noticed her girl awake; she now lies dead and gone in a hole in the ground. Where Beth might have gone, had Maggie been slower.

But no. No. Maggie was not the one who made her drop that shard, who made her look in the remains of the mirror and see herself. Something in her, in Beth herself, had not been ready to go yet. Is still not ready to go; perhaps, now, will never be.

She looks at the man in front of her, and she wonders—what it was that etched that permanent scowl on his face, the scars into his back. Wonders if there are scars she didn't see, when she brought him food that one noon he was sleeping, the sheet draped around his middle in a careless, open puddle. She wonders what makes this man look at her like that, like she's something to fear.

“The hell you gonna do here, then? Tell me ghost stories?”

His eyes sweep her body and Beth feels it flare inside her like a balloon on the edge of bursting—the knowledge that she will have him. That somehow, some way, she will convince him to take her against the wall or in the hay. That Jimmy is sleeping not a hundred yards away and she will be naked in the barn, getting fucked by Daryl Dixon.

“We might as well do something,” she says, bold, in a way he's never heard from her; she sees it in his face, the wariness as she steps forward, farther into the lamplight where she knows he can see her blush, welcomes it.

“The hell you doing?” he mutters, shifting in his stance like he's preparing for a fight, or flight, or both.

“Getting closer,” Beth says, stepping again; one more and she would be against him. “I'm a little cold.”

His eyebrows raise. “It's hot as hell in here.”

“I'm cold.” Beth takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and steps into him.

His jerk is so violent that she expects him to push her away as she leans into him, chest to chest, nudging his bent knee out of the way so she can step between his legs, fold herself close. She expects him to push her away. But he doesn't—just freezes, like a rabbit in the middle of the road, breaths going shallow so his chest doesn't push so against hers. The whites of his eyes roll.

“The _fuck_ you think you're doing,” he growls. His voice rumbles through her body and she presses her tits, uncovered beneath her thin tank, into the tail of it. His shirt is thin, too, worn, and she knows he can feel her.

“Getting closer,” she says again, resting her hands on his hips, just the fingertips; brushes the pads of them along the top of his jeans, trembles a little at how hot his skin is, how damp. She takes a deep breath, steeling. “You ever f-fucked anyone in a barn before?”

“Girl,” he says slowly, “There ain't gonna be no fucking tonight, a'right?”

“You sure about that?” Beth leans into him more, tests his hard weight against her hip—and feels her first real shoot of fear, one that mingles with her arousal and makes her head spin like it had when her blood dripped down, down, dotting the skin of her toes. She rides it, relishes it, pushes into him more strongly until he grunts and his hands move from his sides, shooting out to hold her hips tight—not pushing, not pulling, just holding, like he needs something to anchor him too.

“You ain't in your right mind,” he says quietly. He doesn't let go.

“Cause I tried to kill myself?” She says it as a challenge, a fight, a shout into the dark that it's something to acknowledge, to know—that it is something and it happened and the night can swallow it whole.

“Cause you're a teenager and you're horny,” he says, in his blunt way. His voice rasps, lowers, strokes. “I know all about that. Learned it a hell of a long time ago, too. Longer than you've been alive.”

“You know what you're doing, then.”

“You know nothing about me.”

“Teach me, then.” Beth flattens her palms around his sides, doesn't hide her shudder at his heat, how firm he is; she slides her hands, rucking up his shirt, tracing the ridges of his abdomen and making them both shake. She imagines she can feel him pulsing through his jeans; she imagines he can feel her too, smell her, her liquid heat as it puddles in her panties.

“That’s too much for one night,” he murmurs. His body is relaxing into her, barely; he still feels like he might bolt at any moment, but there is the thought that he would take her with him.

“I got time,” Beth whispers, leaning up to brush his lips.

“You ain't even seventeen, are you?”

“Will be. Few more weeks. Does it matter anymore?”

“Will matter to your daddy. Your sister. The women.”

“And the men?”

“Dunno.” His fingers tighten on her hips, close to bruising. “Depends if they want you too.”

She lets herself grin, then, at the sound of the “too”; decides to leave the rest for a time when she can mull it over, what it means to be prey in this world. She leans up and brushes his lips again, shuddering sweetly at the breath that filters between her own. She tilts onto her toes.

He turns his face away and she gets a mouthful of his scruff; she frowns, but doesn't let it deter her; begins mouthing at his jaw, licking through the stubble, swirling her tongue between small biting teeth. He doesn't respond except to grunt low in his chest, pulse his fingers against her hips. She kisses along to the edge of his jaw, licks the hinge and down, down, follows the V of his neck to a spot that finally makes him groan.

It's then that he pushes her away, hands firm but gentle on her shoulders.

He looks at her, and she wonders what he sees. A child, with sky-blue eyes and pale pink skin; or a woman, subtly curved and rosy cheeked, scarred and marked but hot, wet, wanting. Wanting him.

“Beth,” he says quietly, and she finds she likes her name in his mouth; she likes it a lot. “Why are you doing this? Really.”

“I can't just want you?”

Daryl snorts, rubs his thumbs across the bare skin of her shoulders. “Let's say you can't. Let's say I'm some dirty redneck asshole who's gotten decked for just lookin' at girls like you. Why you want this then?”

Beth thinks about lying. Thinks about sliding her hand down the front of his jeans, grasping his wanting length and making him forget anything to do with reason or meaning. Thinks about turning around, forgetting all this, running back home with her tail between her legs and his mocking laughter in her ears.

Except he wouldn't laugh; not about this, she thinks, as she thinks of what she knows about Daryl Dixon—the way the smallest touch makes him flinch, the wrong glance or a long look enough to send him scurrying. It hurts her sometimes, to think about that—to live a life without touch, without connection, without family to call your own. No matter how lonely Beth feels, she isn't alone—not like him.

She's wondered about him from the beginning; saw his rough hands and rough face and wondered what those hands, those eyes have seen— _what women_ , her mind had whispered, like she knew they would end up here one day, pressed together in the barn at the dead of night, the groans of the passed not yet hewn from the walls.

His eyes on her now send a shiver through her spine that he feels, as he waits for her answer. She wonders what he thinks of her, if he thinks of her—wonders if he's seen himself die the same way.

He wouldn't laugh.

“I don't want it to hurt anymore.”

He tilts his head; squints down at her in that way he does, eyes sunken to black in the shadows of the barn. Beth bites her lip at the sudden vulnerability she feels—like the touch of his hand is the blade of a knife as it smooths a path up her stomach, sliding between her breasts and across her collarbone to rest, light, against her neck, fingertips framing her chin. Beth feels herself begin to shake as his grip slowly hardens; his other hand roams to the small of her back, tugging her in, rubbing a clumsy rhythm. She looks down to his wrist and back to his eyes, and sees his life in them—the pain and the heartache, the struggle, the loss—and as he finally releases his bones to collapse around her, strong arms tightening and heart heaving and eyes, his eyes, lowered at last in lust—as he leans forward to breathe across her lips, she feels the flicker of never going back.

“Girl... it's gonna hurt a lot.”

And he kisses her.

It sears, his kiss, in its desperation—messy and biting and with little finesse—but Beth can't find it in herself to mind. She groans, deep and guttural, because it's not like this, it's never been like this, the way his kiss seems to curl past her tonsils and take root between her ears, hazing her thought and loosing her action and bringing her hands to clutch desperately at his sweat-soaked shirt. He answers with his own sound, a growl she feels in the soles of her feet as his hand slides to the back of her head to press her in, present her to his searching mouth while the other hand grabs a fistful of her ass, squeezes to the point of pain before running across the bottom of her soothingly. Beth opens her mouth and his tongue easily strokes past, stepping through her pretty pink lips to roll across her teeth and tangle with her own tongue, pulsing and alive and almost more than Beth can handle.

When he yanks his head back she feels like a piece of herself goes with him, and she follows, panting, until his grasp on the nape of her neck drags her backwards like a naughty puppy. Beth whimpers low in her throat, lifting her leg across his hip and dragging herself against him.

“You want me that bad, girl?” he asks in a rasp, chest heaving and he clutches at her ass again, grinding them together. “Fuck...”

“Please, Daryl... please...” She buries her face in his neck, first her forehead and then her mouth, sucking hard kisses to the sweaty flesh as the hand on her ass dips down lower to press into the fabric over her entrance.

“Bet you're fucking tight...” he mutters, throwing his head back and groaning as she continues to grind against him, hands clutching his shoulder and his side.

“You're gonna find out.” She kisses down his neck and back up again, swirling her tongue in the well below his ear.

“Don't have a condom—“

“I trust you,” Beth whispers, before biting down on the lobe, hard enough to make him jerk.

“You're a damn fool,” he mutters, then suddenly he's spinning her around and slamming her up against the wall. He steps into her immediately, pinning her between his hard body and the hard wall as he reaches between them to shove her panties and pajama pants down her thighs.

Beth whimpers when his hand comes down to cup her mound, run through her curls and tickle her lips. She looks up to find he's also watching, something indescribable in his eyes as he squeezes her flesh.

“Daryl,” she moans, throwing her head back to thunk against the wall. He presses a trio of biting kisses to her bared neck, squeezes again.

“Shut up,” he mutters, and plunges a finger inside her.

He misjudges the first thrust and stretches her walls painfully, making her wince, but then he adjusts himself and _slides_ , filling her with a thick finger in a way Jimmy's similarly sized digit never did, and Beth has to bite her lip to keep from howling. She clutches tight to his shoulders as he swirls inside her, probing her walls and testing her slick and looking—

“Oh!” Beth cries out, and a hand is once again clasped across her mouth—the same one that had been between her legs, she realizes with a rush of heat, feeling the moisture painting her lips from where it had dribbled down onto his palm. She looks at him, eyes wide like a doe's and lips trembling as he presses himself almost against the back of his own hand, grip on her hip bruising.

“What did I say, girl?”

She tries to speak, is muffled by his hand.

He pulls it back an inch. “What you say?”

“Shut up,” she whispers. He smiles—shortly, only a quirk of the lips, but she suspects for him that's a full on grin—and leans forward to kiss her, tangling his dirty hand in her hair as his other goes to his belt.

“Goin' awful fast, aren't you?” she asks when he pulls back for breath, looking between them as her hands tangle with his, pulling past the first loop.

“You want candles and bubble baths, stick with white-bread,” he growls, abandoning his belt to kiss her again, mouth open and wanton as she pulls her foot out of one leg of her pants. She hitches the freed limb across his hip and rubs herself on the worn fabric of his jeans, giving uncontrollable, breathy cries at the feeling, almost painful.

“Gonna hurt yourself.”

“I don't care,” she moans, dragging up and down again until he grabs her hip and shoves her back to bump hard against the wall.

She stares at him, panting in the dim light as he pushes her leg down and brings his hands back to his belt, finally loosening it enough to shove his pants down his thighs. Before she can get a good look he's against her again, _hard,_ hard and long and leaking onto her skin as he slides his hands up her stomach beneath her tank, squeezing her breasts hard enough to make her squeak.

“Gonna get all manner of hell rained down on us, you keep making this much noise,” he says. She would be offended if his voice weren't equally as breathless, if his hands weren't shaking as they massage her flesh, rough and needy like he hasn't felt up a woman in decades—and maybe he hasn't, Beth thinks, maybe she's his first in who knows how long and in this world may very well be his last. It gives her a sudden rush of power, that thought—like she's going to be the definition of woman to him for the rest of his short, violent life. The possibility makes her want to moan all over again.

“I'm trying,” she whispers, spanning her hands across his back and biting her lip at the feel of him on her hip, her stomach, his long hard shaft and the scratchy hairs beneath and the precum painting her skin like a masterpiece.

“Want me inside you?” he asks roughly, lids heavy and full as he watches her, eyes flicking from her face to her tits and back. “Ya still want me?”

“Please,” she whispers desperately, clutching his biceps. He presses close to kiss her lips, her jaw, her neck, and then his hands are on her ass again, hoisting her up to rub her snatch against his stomach as her legs wrap around to clutch his hips. Their pants echo into the barn as they maneuver, scratching Beth's back painfully on the wall and making him curse when he can't quite make it, hitting her clit and then her perineum and there—

And then he's inside, and it _burns_ —the stretch of him, the press, the glorious heat he gives off like an atom bomb inside an oven and Beth can't close her mouth as the feeling of fullness washes over her, blinding. He doesn't seem to be doing much better—he leans on her heavily, limbs trembling, holding her easily but seeming about to collapse himself as he adjusts to the feeling of being inside a woman, inside her.

“ _Daryl,_ ” she breathes, burying a hand in his hair, kissing his neck, scratching across the hairs on his lower back.

“Fuck... fuck,” he growls back, hands almost in fists around her sides as he shakes. “Wait... wait just a minute, I gotta...”

“You need to move _now,_ Daryl.”

And he does; after a few stuttering starts, he moves, dragging out and back in—slow and jittery at first, then stronger, stroking in and out and pressing her bare ass into the wood, scraping the skin raw. Movement flickers in the corner of Beth’s eye but her awareness is abandoned as Daryl pulls small noises from her throat with every thrust. She bites her lips against the moans begging to spill into the shifting dark, rides the desperate stretch as it widens from stinging pain to simple pleasure, gushing through her dripping cunt while she wraps herself around him like a bow on a present as he begins to fuck her harder, bouncing her like the lantern light on the walls. His hips snap, they roll, his hands bury in her hair and skim her sides and pull her shirt up above her breasts so he can duck his head and suck on her tits, biting one raw and red before moving to the next, all the while pounding, pounding, pounding her with little and louder gasps into the wall.

“Don't stop, don't, oh God, God—“

“Fuck, fuck Beth, _fuck_ —“

And Beth hangs on for dear life, head thrown back and neck bared as he abandons her tits to bury his face in her shoulder, kneading the flesh with his teeth as his hips snap, thighs surging as he fucks her deeper with each thrust.

“Ain't much more—“

She can feel his movements growing erratic, frantic, and she heaves herself up by his shoulders, climbing him like a tree until he slips out and his hand goes between them, knuckles scraping her clit with every pass down his cock until he's coming, coming, spotting the dusky barn wall.

If it weren't for the need to hold her up he would have collapsed; as it is, he slumps against her, torso pressing her back into the wood. She breathes deeply, in and out through her nose, watching the dancing shadows of the dark of the barn move and shift as her eyelids flicker. Her abandoned clit screams, throbbing on the edge of something she's never known in her short almost-seventeen years; he's shifting against her again, pressing short, small kisses to her shoulder, and she grabs his hand to guide him down—

“What the hell is this?

The voice is hoarse, tortured, and they freeze, Daryl's thumb just pressed to Beth's clit. Their eyes lock in the dim; they both swallow, and Daryl lets her down, prepared to turn and face whatever fate.

Beth peers over Daryl's shoulder, and sees him step out of the darkness—Mr. Grimes, the sheriff, hands twitching near his gun belt as he looks them over, blinking in the lantern light. She realizes with a start that he did not just arrive—that she had seen him, glimpses of him as she bounced on Daryl's cock, glimpses she did not register until he steps again forward.

“Rick—“

“What the hell is this?” he asks again.

Beth can feel Daryl shrinking with shame, curling in on himself as he continues to block her half-bared body. He's looking resolutely into the darkness, tears building like twinkling stars in his eyes. To see a man who moments ago had loomed so large collapsed like this, folded and creased to the box he keeps himself in—it breaks Beth's heart.

And then there's Mr. Grimes. Mr. Grimes, whose wife bears a child that might not be his own. Mr. Grimes, whose son lies healing, whose group lives breaking, who walked up to a little girl and shot her between the eyes. Mr. Grimes, whose gaze drifts between her face and Daryl's muscled ass, the ass he had moments before seen surging between Beth's milky white thighs; who looks towards Beth's chest, where her tits had bounced beneath a bared throat, scraped red by Daryl's teeth. Her cheeks burn and her clit throbs and for once in her life Beth doesn't think.

“I asked him, Mr. Grimes,” Beth says in a voice she didn't know she could make—breathy and full of heat in a way that jerks Daryl's gaze back to her, tightens his hands on her waist. “I wanted it.”

“Daryl, she's a kid—“

“Do I look like a kid?” Beth shakes out of her pajama pants and steps around Daryl into the pool of lamplight. She waits until she knows both men's eyes are on her, burning, before she pulls her tank over her head. It flutters in the deafening silence, settling with a whisper on the hay.

“Beth.” It's Daryl saying this, confused; but for now Beth's eyes are all for Mr. Grimes. Mr. Grimes, who—with his heated gaze stroking the skin between her thighs and licking trails around her hard pink nipples—seems to be answering no.

“I thought I heard walkers,” he murmurs, eyes flicking to her face but dragging down her flushed body, almost despite himself.

“Just us,” Beth says. Her heart is pounding faster than it ever has—faster than when her mother nearly tore her throat out, faster than the beats that spilled her blood on the bathroom floor—and she feels like a being outside herself as she steps forward.

Mr. Grimes is on the very edge of the lamplight, and the back half of him recedes into shadow. It is almost as if he is made part of darkness as his eyes dart back to Daryl's.

“You shouldn't be here at night,” he says to him, ignoring the naked girl moving towards him. “Ought'a be on lookout—“

“Mr. Grimes.”

He pauses with mouth open, looking back to her. Drawn, once more, to her tits. She doesn't know what she's doing; she doesn't think as she steps into his space, tilts her head back to look at him.

“Yes, Beth?” he says, hoarse. Beth hears Daryl shift in the hay behind her, stepping forward as if to intervene—to save them, Beth thinks, as if one were a walker and the other the prey.

Hesitating, Beth reaches out, slips her hands soft into Mr. Grimes'. For a moment she simply holds them, intertwined, as he looks at her. She thinks of the day, days ago, before her attempt, when Maggie told her he had brought her father home safely—how he remained silent when Beth slipped like a wisp from her bedroom, pressed herself to his chest in an embrace as deep as her weakened heart could make it, whispered her thanks before vanishing again. She hadn’t looked too deeply into the look in his eyes—surprise and embarrassment and something like awe—but now she remembers it; now, she sees it, drowned as it is in the stirrings of lust.

She sees now the same look as when she walked up to him, and, from the deep breaths behind her, she thinks that Daryl sees it too: the weight in his eyes, the load—the way the whole world is cracking and he's straddling the rift on stilts—the way, although he doesn't know it, he begs.

She holds his hands, smiles, soft; then slowly, so slow, she pulls, raising them and shifting them and placing them across her pebbled, aching breasts.

The gasp he makes as he meets her flesh sends a shiver through Beth's body and this next step she doesn't plan—it turns into a stumble that he catches with his hands on her tits, not moving yet but not, either, moving away. Beth's breath catches at the way he's looking at her—like she's something to devour, to own—his eyes flicker behind her and when she feels Daryl's heat spread like spilled milk across her back, she knows what they are there to do.

Still holding Mr. Grimes's hands to her, Beth steps back into Daryl, feeling him shift so she can settle against his chest. His hands land on her hips. She doesn't know what changed Daryl's mind, what brought him forward, but she's glad it did. He buttresses her, gives her strength against her doubts. Mr. Grimes still cannot look away from her, her body, their hands; his breath is coming so hard it's nearly in sobs as Beth looks down, sees the bulge in his jeans.

“She feels good, Rick,” Daryl says, lips brushing Beth's ear. She leans her head back against his shoulder, watching Mr. Grimes with half lidded eyes. “She wants it. She hasn't come yet.”

“I want to come, Mr. Grimes,” she whispers, pressing down on his knuckles, encouraging him to knead; and she feels the barest flexing, the calluses shifting over her aching buds. She sighs, tips her head back further; there's a beat, and then Daryl is kissing her neck and up her jaw, feather light and silent. From Mr. Grimes's gaze, she knows Daryl's eyes are on him.

“Your dad will crucify me,” Mr. Grimes says, gripping her, in one flex making her eyes roll back. His wife is small, like her—he must know how to suck, how to treat her right. The thought makes her sing.

(The guilt, for a moment, rushes her—Lori is the woman who held her while she cried and pulled a steak knife from her bed and treated her like she was her own—she doesn’t deserve this betrayal.

But then Beth looks at Mr. Grimes and sees the weight of the world weighing him down in boulders a wife can't shift, just like Maggie's hands cannot turn her own stones to rubble. They all carry so much in this world; Mr. Grimes, in some ways, most of all. She wonders if someone had come to her those days ago, offered her a comfort that didn’t end with her blood on the floor, if she would have taken the shard to her wrist at all.

They are all looking for escapes: Lori with Shane, Beth with death, Mr. Grimes with… her.

This is both more and less than sex for them, she decides; it is a healing.)

“Hershel ain't here,” Daryl says against her skin. “Girl wants it.”

“A teenager—“

Beth says nothing; just pulls her neck out of Daryl's reach, letting go of Mr. Grimes's hands to reach down, thread into his belt loops, tug him forward. He stumbles a little until suddenly she's between the men, burning hot, the musk of their bodies seeping into her bare skin. Daryl's stirring dick nudges her ass and Beth presses back, grinding up and down until he growls. Mr. Grimes watches her every move like Daryl would track a rabbit in the underbrush—six feet of coiled attention all brought to bear on her, her hips circling back against Daryl Dixon's dick. “I want it,” she whispers, closing her eyes as Daryl's hand snakes around to her front. Her last sight is Mr. Grimes's eyes fixed between her legs as Daryl's hand reaches her clit.

Beth breathes out a sigh, leaning back against Daryl and pulling Mr. Grimes closer until his bulge brushes against Daryl's knuckles. Daryl's movements pause at the touch, then continue, purposefully rolling across Mr. Grimes as he circles Beth's clit. Nothing exists for the three but Daryl's fingers between her legs, Mr. Grimes's hands still on her breasts. His hands are moving now in time with Daryl's circles, kneading the flesh and pressing her into the strong chest behind her. Beth arches, pushing against the two of them wantonly, eyes shut and mouth open as Daryl strokes and touches, picks up speed as her breath begins to hitch, bites her neck and licks her ear and must say something with his eyes for the moment he presses down hard beneath her hood Mr. Grimes squeezes roughly, twisting her nipples and launching her into starlight.

Beth comes down shuddering, sweating, plunged icy cold and burning hot in the humidity of the barn, the smell of ancient animals and week-gone decay. Daryl holds her tightly against him, rubbing her stomach soothingly as she whimpers, lids slowly lifting to see Mr. Grimes's eyes wide open, blown, thumbs drifting across her nipples in a maddeningly glancing touch. Beth's chest heaves against him, moving his hands up and down, slow and swelling as the sea.

When at last her heart has begun to calm, Daryl presses on her stomach one more time before nudging her forward, pulling his sweaty front away from her back. Beth looks over her shoulder, not dislodging Mr. Grimes's hands from her chest, and sees Daryl settle back against the wall, hand coming down to grasp his half-hard dick, jeans and underwear still tucked under his balls. He looks at her, then up at Mr. Grimes. She sees the light of challenge in his eyes; of a man still taking another man's measure.

“You gonna kiss her or what?”

Beth turns back to Mr. Grimes, looks at him through half-lidded eyes. Her fingers tug teasingly at his belt loops, little jerks that draw him closer and closer until the rough material of his shirt brushes against her stomach. His hands abandon her chest then; she has only a moment to feel the loss before one curls around the back of her neck, the other sliding down to cup an ass cheek, exploring her contours with slow but strong fingers. Beth bites her lip as his thumb strokes the skin beneath her ear, his hooded blue eyes burning, burning her in the lamplight.

“What was it like, Daryl?”

Beth shivers at how deep his voice has gone, how it rumbles through the air between them; she smoothes her hands around his waist, settling on the sticky skin beneath his shirt.

“Like fucking fire.”

Mr. Grimes nods, slowly, eyes skating across her young body. Beth opens her mouth—to tease him, to cajole, to even, at this point, beg—but he beats her to it; strokes her neck one more time, squeezes her ass, then drags her in to seal against his lips.

If Daryl was wildfire, Mr. Grimes is a hurricane: purposeful, focused, a funnel of spiraling heat as he smoothes both hands across her shoulder blades, running up and down like he wants to absorb the cells of her skin. Beth hums against his lips as he moves against her, and when he asks entrance she grants it readily, groaning loudly at the feeling of his tongue on hers, the practiced way it rolls inside her mouth, chases her teeth. She reaches below the waist of his jeans to squeeze his ass, kneading him deeply as he had done to her breasts, and his resulting growl is echoed behind her. Mr. Grimes pulls his lips from hers slowly, looking up at Daryl and gulping. Beth follows his gaze.

Daryl’s shucked his jeans and boots and stands only in his shirt, braced on the wall and legs spread wide as he works himself, one hand on the wall and the other fondling his balls, moving up to fist his cock before pressing his fingers into the area beyond. His eyes are half closed, thin lips parted, stomach muscles clenching beneath his shirt as sweat runs down his temples, tickles the corner of his mouth. When he sees them looking he pauses, moves to close his legs, flushing with embarrassment.

“Stop,” Mr. Grimes says. His voice cracks like lightning. Daryl freezes, thighs trembling as Mr. Grimes yanks Beth against him and walks her backwards, farther into the lamplight. Beth looks between them, feels a sharpened awareness growing. She’s seen the way they are with each other—how Rick entreats and Daryl retreats, the strange dance they do around family and loyalty and a shared sense of duty. She doesn’t know what they’ve gone through before they came to the farm, but she knows they’re still new, still figuring each other out; an unfinished partnership, on the cusp of both unity and dissolution. All that energy comes to bear in this moment as they decide what to be.

“Rick—”

“What do you want to see, Daryl?” Mr. Grimes moves both hands to Beth’s ass. His fingers stroke across her asscheeks, then sink in, slowly, deep, pulling the flesh apart to reveal her to Daryl. The man groans softly, gripping the base of his cock and biting his lip as Mr. Grimes’s hips thrust out, arcing Beth’s back and presenting her like a platter. “This is for you too.” Daryl remains silent, fist pulsing on his cock. His eyes meet with Beth’s, and his breath hitches. “Answer me, Daryl,” Mr. Grimes says, almost a whisper.

“Turn sideways,” Daryl says roughly, throat scraping like sandpaper. “Touch her tits again.”

The slow smile that spreads across Mr. Grimes’s face makes Beth’s breath catch. It feels like something she isn’t meant to see yet; something like the men’s relationship, unfinished, not yet carved from his uncut stone, a simmering ferality. She wonders if this is what the world is making him; turned her to tinder and Daryl the spark and Mr. Grimes the wind that stirs them to flame.

Mr. Grimes turns his eyes to hers again and she shivers in his arms. His hands move to the dip of her back, soothing as he shuffles her around with his feet, presenting to Daryl their pressed together bodies. Beth looks at Daryl and feels a spike of heat at his hooded eyes, his large rough hand on his cock, the way his eyes linger on Beth’s tits and her spit-shined lips. She doesn’t know if she wants to touch him or watch as she gives him the show.

Mr. Grimes decides for her. Eyes on Daryl, he slides a hand down the curve of her ass again, squeezing once before working between her thighs from behind, stroking up and down her closed lips. Beth hums, gripping his sweat-soaked shirt and arching her back. His light touch feels good on her pussy, still swollen from Daryl before him. His other hand goes to her tit, rolling the nipple between index and middle finger before kneading the breast and repeating the light touch, alternating between pressure and tease until Beth is panting against him, eyes squeezed shut. Daryl’s breathing is loud and labored but Mr. Grimes is silent; Beth opens her eyes and sees him watching her intently, eyes boring into her skull in a way that makes her flash with heat.

“And what do _you_ want, sweetheart?” he murmurs, lips plum-red, finger sliding between her sopping lips. For a moment Beth can't speak; his finger wiggles, seeking entry through the press of her thighs, but she doesn't open them; lets him work for it, clenches on the pressure, jumps when he finally finds her entrance and presses into the fleshy surroundings, circling once, twice, before dipping in and sliding into her core. Beth moans, low and deep, and suddenly Mr. Grimes's boot is connecting with her ankle, kicking her legs wider so he can fit more of his hand between her legs, more of his finger inside her. Beth glares at him for the throbbing in her ankle but it quickly turns into a swoon as he squeezes her nipple, twisting it back and forth as he hunches himself over her, withdraws his finger, presses it, still from behind, against her begging clit.

“Mr. Grimes—“

“Why do you call me that?” he asks. He glances at Daryl. “Daryl isn't Mr. Dixon.” A smirk flashes across Mr. Grimes's face. “Although I bet he'd like that.”

Beth looks over at Daryl and finds his face beet red, precum beading between his twisting fingers.

“You would?” she asks.

“Daryl's fine,” he mutters, glancing away from them, cock jerking in his hand.

“And so is Rick.” He pulls his hand from between her legs and circles a nipple with his index finger, painting her with her own juices. Beth trembles, almost a shiver, continuous and never ending as they watch the movement of Mr. Grimes's—Rick's—hand, dipping between her legs again to gather more moisture to cover the other, spread across her neck. He pulls the rest to his mouth, sucks it in. Beth can barely hear her own pants above Daryl's, who sounds like he's about to pass out. Rick's looking at her like she's something sacred, anointed, his fingers and her cunt inside his mouth.

“You taste so sweet, Beth,” he says softly.

“Thank you,” she whispers, flushing when he grins, like he's laughing at her.

Neither of them are laughing, though, when he tilts his head, leans forward to kiss her, light, beneath the ear; again, on the V of her neck; again, in the hollow of her throat, tongue darting out to gather her drying liquids before they vanish. Beth's head rolls back on her neck as he continues the action, lapping up her neck and down, hands massaging the outside of her thighs as she trembles.

“Rick—“

“You taste so sweet, Beth,” he says again, against her collarbone, the top of her sternum. “You didn't answer me, you know.”

“Huh?”

“I asked what you want.”

Beth pushes his head down so his chuckle shivers across her nipple. The next moment he's engulfing it, sucking softly as she arches forward. His hand supports the small of her back as she bends and her arms sling around his neck, supported on his shoulders and pressing into the back of his head, pressing him to her, the steady pressure of his mouth and tongue suckling at her breast. Shifting her in his arms, he kisses across her sternum to the other breast, repeats the action. Daryl is panting again.

“Rick,” Beth says, pausing to moan as he traps her between his teeth. “Rick.”

“Yes, Beth?”

“I want you both now.”

She feels Rick smile against her flesh, hears Daryl's breath catch. Rick straightens and looks at Daryl, his face, his cock swollen and ready again.

Rick strokes Beth's thigh as he thinks and Beth's body trembles against him, something in the night catching up to her, this pause giving her the hideous time to doubt. Doubt her decision, doubt these men—doubt that they'll protect her, that they won't tell the whole camp that they had the farmer's daughter; doubt that if her daddy finds out he won’t run them off the farm and with them any hope of protection; that she's doing this in lust and not in desperation, another suicidal intention. She feels like she's dying as Rick nudges her towards Daryl, towards the mat of hay at his feet. She steps forward and glances between them, at their strong hands and solid bodies and the way they look at her: Rick's gaze measured, Daryl's desperate, but both burning with something new, something strange, something she's never seen in the movies she found on Maggie's computer. Something one might call devotion.

So she takes another step, and another, until she's in front of Daryl's trembling body. She touches his strong thigh, his shoulder; watches his eyes as she kisses his cheek.

“On all fours, Beth,” Rick says from behind her.

Beth holds Daryl's gaze a moment longer before stepping into the deepest part of the hay and sinking to her knees. The hay is scratchy and uncomfortable but she forgets about it when she feels Rick's hand start massaging the juncture between her neck and shoulder. He sets a steady rub of the bulge in his pants across the back of her head, and Beth closes her eyes, biting her lip. Her pussy tingles, remembering the recent stretch of Daryl inside her. Taking a deep breath, she squeezes Rick's hand, and leans forward in the hay.

She listens to the shuffle of Rick's falling clothing and the men's quiet breaths as she watches the shadows of the barn; lingers in them, the dark the lantern casts, the secrets that live along with the light. She feels steeped in secrets, in words she can't share—of despair and trust and the feeling of being left behind, of the movement of the world and its survivors as she stands still, clutching her wrist, bleeding. She looks down at her wrist and in the flickers sees blood dripping from it, soaking the hay like it's soaked the carpet, the floor; the weeping for a world she was not old enough to understand before it vanished.

On her knees, naked in a barn with two hard men, she suddenly misses her mother; she misses her sunshine smile and soft hands and the way she cast no shadow, for her light was one that defied whatever laws the universe set. It stabs through Beth, the thought that there's no such light left in the world; that this is all they’ll ever have, hidden trysts in the dusk of the barn, desperately clawing their way through the black.

She wonders, though, at the looks she’s seen in their eyes tonight: as if when Rick and Daryl look at her they see no shadow, no dark. Like they see only her, or what they believe to be her—her unblemished skin and young body, her flaxen hair and arch of neck, the peace promised between her legs and in her eyes, the brightness she casts beyond what the lamp could give, a light all her own. Tears prickle her eyes even as she imagines they prickle theirs, struck with the gravity of this coming together, this light and this dark.

Beth feels Rick kneel behind her and she swallows, blinking sharply, banishing the tears before Daryl comes round in front of her. His balls hang heavy and full above her face, and unconsciously she licks her lips; his dick twitches and he sinks to his knees as Rick runs his hands across Beth's rump, pressing a lingering kiss to the small of her back.

“You sure you want this, baby?” Rick asks into her skin, hand traveling to her calf, tickling the arch of her foot. Beth meets Daryl's eyes in front of her. Some of the desperation has gone from them, and in their place lies understanding. He reaches out a hand and touches the broad of his index finger beneath her eye—it comes away glistening. Beth swallows, looks down. Daryl's hand is gentle as he raises her chin; his eyes soft as he leans in and kisses her, sweet, a comfort.

“I want this,” Beth whispers against his lips.

She groans, pitching forward a little as Rick reaches between her legs to cup her mound; she spreads her legs on shaky knees, tightening her thighs to stop their trembling—from desire, from nerves, from fear of the dark.

But Rick's lips are on her shoulders; Daryl's hand has covered hers in the hay. She feels whole.

Rick's dick bumps against her ass as he positions himself. His knuckles spread her lips as he pushes inside.

Beth's mouth hangs open and her head just hangs, neck tight and tense as the feeling of fullness washes over her again. Rick is shaking behind her now, vibrating hands traveling up and down her back in a touch he means to be soothing, but which only gets her hotter, the way they tell his desire. She opens her eyes and Daryl is stroking his dick again, slow, distracted; his eyes are on her face, open, vulnerable, questioning. Beth looks at him and, trembling, smiles; she breathes in deep, and with a sigh pushes back.

Rick hisses from behind her, nails digging into her back where they rest, hands sticky and damp, jerking as she squeezes her inner muscles, constricting his girth. Daryl's eyes flick away from hers to meet Rick's over her head; whatever passes between them, it ends with a nod, small; and Rick begins to move.

He starts with slow, driving thrusts; letting her adjust, get used to him, accept him into her body as she sits bowed over in the hay, eyes on Daryl's seeping dick where it jerks a foot from her face. Daryl's eyes are on her as she reaches forward, grasping him in a solid fist; his breath exits him in a rush as Rick hits her at a new angle, making her jerk.

“Lie down, Daryl,” she says, with what breath she can.

“You don't—“

“I want to. I want it. I want to.” Beth can't seem to stop talking, Rick's accelerating thrusts pushing the words from her pulsing throat, and she repeats herself again and again, softer and soft and trailing away as Daryl spreads his legs to fit them around her, sliding forward until she can reach him. Trying to keep focus as her pussy tingles and contracts, she leans forward, kisses his thigh and nuzzles his hair and pants into the root of his balls as Rick's long, dragging thrusts begin to build inside her.

Rick's movements pause when Daryl groans, loud; Rick leans sideways and his breath leaves him in a rush as he sees her stretched red lips, Daryl's swollen length disappearing between. Beth's hands are tight on his thighs as she lowers to her elbows on the sides of his hips, pushing her ass higher to remind Rick where he is, who he's inside, how slick her heat is around him. When she mumbles out a moan and Daryl groans Rick begins to move again, pitching, harder, hands gripping her hips like a steering wheel.

And so they rock together: Daryl splayed on his back on his elbows, watching this golden girl with his dick in her mouth, the sheriff with his dick in her; Rick with eyes shut and knuckles whitening as his thrusts gain speed; Beth with a dick in her mouth and a dick in her pussy and loving it, cherishing it, moaning desperately around Daryl's cock as Rick's thrusts bob her up and down, hitting her throat and making her gag and plunging her down once more as spit and precum dribbles down his shaft. The hay scrapes Beth's nipples as Daryl's hand tangles in her hair, changing the angle of her head until he moans loud enough to be heard from outside; he pushes Beth's hair from her face and grips it tight and draws her eyes, round and blue, luminous in the darkness.

“Fuck, girl,” he growls, hips jerking at the sword of her eyes. “Fuck, that's—“

“Perfect,” Rick grunts, hips now hitting her hard enough to make a sound, balls slapping against her pussy with each thrust, hands wandering down to circle her pelvis and tug her more sharply against him. Beth whines loudly, shoving back, nails clawing at Daryl's thighs and Rick understands, of course he understands; he brings his hand all the way to her front and presses up, stroking her clit in easy practiced draws until she's shaking and panting and has to pull off of Daryl so she can clench her teeth and sink her head by his balls and squeeze her eyes against the pressure that builds and builds and rips her apart.

She moans, nearly a cry, loud and long; and even when Daryl's hand covers her mouth she doesn't stop, when it turns into a sob it doesn't stop, when tears gush down her cheeks she's still coming and calling and burying her face in his thigh, straw in her eyelashes and precum in her hair and Rick's cum falling on her back like the last spring rain.

Daryl comes several moments later, angling away from her so he sprays across the barn floor. Rick's hand is on her ass again, gently pushing her down to rest, but it hardly registers as she shakes with sobs she's never felt before, not this strong, not like this, not like her entire body is filled with the whole of the ocean and only a tsunami can flush her out.

She doesn't know how long she cries, on the floor of the barn, cum in her hair and on her back and legs still slick with her own. All she knows is that when she comes to, when her eyes clear and her sobs quiet into hiccups of breath, she's cradled to a hard, broad chest, stretched across heavily muscled thighs. There's another hand in her hair, stroking her, and she realizes she's covered in a men's shirt, unbuttoned but tucked around her breasts. She looks up into Daryl's eyes, concerned and wary but he does not look away; she feels Rick's hand smooth across her shoulders before a kiss presses itself into her neck.

“Sorry,” Beth whispers. Her voice doesn't seem to be working. It comes out more as a breath than words, but they seem to understand; Daryl's arms tighten around her and Rick kisses her again and the men press together ever closer, naked hip to naked hip, any discomfort they might have felt effaced in the sorrow of the girl in their arms.

“Ain't something to be sorry for,” Daryl says. He leans his forehead against her temple as she closes her eyes, focuses on the feel of Rick's lips wandering across her shoulder, Daryl's body hard and warm beneath her. “You needed it.”

“It wasn't cause of you two, you know, you were... amazing.”

Rick chuckles from behind her, reaching a hand forward to rub the outside of her thigh. Even Daryl's mouth quirks as he presses it to her skin.

“Didn’t think those were screams of pain, sweetheart.” 

She smiles a watery smile, giggles, muffles the sounds in Daryl's chest. Rick's thumb slides across her thigh, gentle, back and forth.

She's never felt so warm, before; not hot, even in this sticky night, but warm—full in a way even their two bodies couldn't manage. She rests her cheek on Daryl's chest, listens to his heartbeat, his breath; follows his rhythm without noticing she does it, as if their joining tonight has made them one heart, one being. She feels that way as Daryl presses a hesitant kiss to her matted hair; as Rick’s arm brushes her back when he cups his hand around Daryl’s shoulder.

The first light of the sun begins to trickle between the slats of the barn; Beth notices, but none of them move, not yet. She feels their eyes on her as she catches the rays of the rising light. She wonders what they see as they watch this girl between them, the rise of her shoulders and the fall of her breath, the strong curve of her neck as she trusts her rest to their care. She blinks, and feels, despite what they’ve done, more a girl now than she has in years—small and sweet and curled into Daryl's chest, under Rick’s arm, like they could shield her from the sun's building rays.

But even Daryl’s broad shoulders, Rick's wide hands, can't halt the light that chases away their night; can't turn back the clock and return them to a dark that's theirs, a dark they've made; a dark only visible behind Beth's cocooned, muted, emerging sun.


End file.
